Milan is more than a setting in the book: it is the recurring urban stage where postwar political movements meet, compete for crowds, and test the limits of state authority. Its public squares and procession routes frame the confrontations of 1919; its party headquarters host disputes over Fiume and the direction of Fascism; and, by 1922, its streets and newspaper offices become part of a national crisis over who commands the city. Later scenes at a theater, a railway station, and a mass political gathering show how violence and opposition persist within ordinary urban life.

Streets, Crowds, and Political Conflict

On April 15, 1919, Milan’s arena holds tens of thousands of proletarians gathered for a socialist demonstration. From the procession, several thousand break away and head along Via Orefici toward the Duomo. The account presents this movement as an escalation without a prearranged plan: a crowd spilling from the stadium into the city, while the expectation of catastrophe already hangs over the gathering. Milan’s streets become the route by which political anticipation turns into confrontation.

At Piazza Duomo, a cordon of carabinieri separates the socialist column from a smaller counter-demonstration that includes officers, students, Arditi, and Fascists. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti addresses the counter-demonstrators from the base of the equestrian monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, then urges bystanders to join them. When the two processions face each other, women lead the socialist march carrying a portrait of Lenin and a red flag. Their singing and calls for a better life for their children stand in sharp contrast to the men on the opposing side, many of whom have lived with wartime killing. The cordon opens; the clash lasts about a minute. Stones and clubs come from the socialist side, while gunfire from officers, Arditi, and Futurists is first directed into the air and then toward the column. The interruption of the singing marks a sudden change in the character of the public gathering.

The city’s political theater also draws on symbols originating beyond Milan. In 1919, while Gabriele D’Annunzio speaks from the Campidoglio in Rome, a flag associated with the dead infantry captain Giovanni Randaccio becomes a symbol of Italy’s contested victory and claims over Fiume and Dalmatia. That parallel matters to Milan because, a year later, the settlement of the Adriatic question becomes the subject of a sharp dispute among Fascists meeting in the city. Milan is thus both a site of street conflict and a place where national causes are converted into arguments over political strategy.

Party Politics and the Fiume Dispute

On November 15, 1920, news of the Treaty of Rapallo reaches Milan. The agreement assigns Zadar to Italy, leaves Fiume independent, and places Sussak under Croatian control; Italy relinquishes Dalmatia. Benito Mussolini declares himself broadly satisfied with the compromise, while maintaining that the question of Dalmatia could be revisited. His position places him at odds with Fascists committed to D’Annunzio’s cause in Fiume.

That same day, the Central Committee of the Fasci di Combattimento meets at headquarters on Via Monte di Pietà. The room’s arrangement reflects the division: Cesare Rossi, Massimo Rocca, and Umberto Pasella sit with Mussolini, while Cesare De Vecchi, Pietro Belli, Pietro Marsich, and other supporters of Fiume oppose them. A delegation of Dalmatians stands against the wall. Mussolini argues that the settlement must be accepted as a fact, in part because the country is exhausted and a renewed crisis might strengthen the socialists. Marsich rejects that argument, insisting that the movement associated with Fiume can continue despite the treaty. The meeting makes Milan a setting for an internal struggle over whether Fascism should pursue national discipline and political calculation or remain committed to a more uncompromising Fiume-centered cause.

Spectacle, Violence, and Public Life

The Kursaal Diana connects Milan’s ordinary cultural life to the political violence surrounding it. On the night of the bombing described in the book, the theater is staging the final reprise of Franz Lehár’s The Blue Mazurka. The operetta’s dances appeal to both bourgeois audiences and poorer spectators, and its performance evokes a shared life of entertainment before the war. The explosion abruptly destroys that setting. The account records the emergency response and the grief of relatives, but also the uncertainty surrounding responsibility: some survivors blame anarchists, while the claim that an anarchist threw the bomb is treated as unreliable.

Mussolini knows the theater and has met police chief Giovanni Gasti nearby. After the explosion, Fascists around him propose reprisals against the offices of Avanti!, labor organizations, and the anarchist newspaper Umanità nova. He neither encourages nor prevents them; instead, he remains among the crowd and observes the aftermath. The episode makes Milan’s cultural spaces part of the political landscape without reducing them to mere backdrops: a popular performance, a public disaster, and the prospect of retaliation converge in the same neighborhood.

Milan’s public spaces also become places where Fascist organization is staged. In another episode, a Very rocket rises over a gathering near the house of Alessandro Manzoni. Its signal leads into an address by Ferruccio Vecchi, captain of the Arditi, whose speech invokes wartime experience and presents the movement as a force against established interests. The scene places a military signal and a mass political meeting within the city, showing how the memory and imagery of war are used to shape collective political identity.

A City at the Center of the 1922 Crisis

In October 1922, Milan is both the home of the original Fascist organization and a site where the limits of its force become visible. At a secret meeting on Via San Marco, generals and Fascist leaders discuss the prospect of armed confrontation. General Pietro Badoglio’s reported warning—that Fascism would collapse at the first shot—casts doubt on claims that the squads have become an army. Italo Balbo has assured Mussolini that their militarization is proceeding, but the account distinguishes the squads’ capacity for intimidation and street attacks from the discipline and training of a genuine military force.

As the crisis deepens, the city’s infrastructure takes on a direct political role. On the morning of October 26, the Galleria is blocked by royal guards, machine guns cover Piazza della Scala from the Commercial Bank building, and trams are diverted. Soldiers set up heavy machine guns near the canal and at intersections around Via Solferino, Via San Marco, and Via Brera. At the newspaper offices of Il Popolo d’Italia, Enzo Galbiati reports that armored cars and a battalion of royal guards are approaching, apparently to arrest the leaders of the sedition. Cesare Rossi proposes an arrangement to avert bloodshed: the Fascists and Arditi in the streets will withdraw into the building if police forces stop at the corner of Via Moscova. The city is no longer simply the stage for rallies; its streets, transport, and buildings are elements in a contest over control.

The account also emphasizes the contrast between public alarm and Mussolini’s perception of familiar surroundings. As he walks through Via Brera, Via Solferino, and Via Statuto, people continue their routines, while rumors from Naples and Rome seem distant. That ordinary morning sits beside the emergency measures elsewhere in Milan. The contrast gives the city two simultaneous faces: daily life proceeding along known routes, and a political crisis already visible in barricades, armed deployments, and the threatened occupation of a newspaper headquarters.

Opposition and the Aftermath of Violence

Milan remains a setting for conflict after the Fascist seizure of national power. On March 12, 1924, Cesare Forni arrives at Milan Central Station, where he is attacked from behind by men who strike him with clubs. Forni had presented a dissident electoral list and publicly accused Fascist leaders of benefiting from public money after once living in poverty. His assault brings political intimidation into the station’s ordinary flow of passengers and makes the city’s transport hub a place where opposition can be punished in public.

The aftermath of Giacomo Matteotti’s murder brings anti-Fascist forces together in Milan on November 30, 1924. A large portrait of Matteotti, decorated with flowers and leaves, stands at the center of the gathering as participants call for justice and denounce the assassins. The event coincides with a widening political challenge: investigating magistrates seek indictments for alleged organizers as well as direct perpetrators, and prominent figures criticize the government in the Senate. As its support erodes, Milan’s assembly gives public form to a crisis that had become national. Across the book, the city’s recurring significance lies in this convergence: crowds and institutions, political ritual and street violence, ordinary urban space and the struggle over the state all occupy the same ground.